


passing through

by metrosun (Afueras)



Category: Durarara!!
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-20
Updated: 2017-12-20
Packaged: 2019-02-17 07:58:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13072557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Afueras/pseuds/metrosun
Summary: just izaya, tipsy and thinking.





	passing through

**Author's Note:**

> first fanfic in a long, long time. first DRRR fanfic ever. go easy on me lol. about to start posting a multi-chap one, but wanted to break ground with this cliche one-off drabble first to get back into the swing of things.

Izaya sits at his desk, swills the leftover bourbon at the bottom of his glass. The sun set hours ago and Namie is long gone. His work for the day is done, the forums and chatrooms are fairly empty, and the city is quiet. Strangely, Izaya feels no need to change that. 

Instead he sits and broods with no trace of his usual facades. Once a month or so, he has a night like this. Masks get put down, and he may drink a little bit too much. Maybe he will light a cigarette, even.

He won’t leave the apartment, though. Each and every one of Izaya’s many phones are switched off and put out of reach. 

There is thinking to be done, and Izaya wishes he didn’t have to do it. He wishes his brain were less hyperactive, however well it suits his line of work. He wishes alcohol made him numb more than tired and anxious. He wishes he had said things in the past, so that the unspoken memory of them wouldn’t haunt him now. 

He wishes he had never slashed Shizuo across the chest on the first day they met.

That one was hard to admit. It was a regret he would never admit to anyone, and hadn’t admitted to himself for a very long time. Not that he was in the habit of harboring regrets. He had always found it best to distance himself from his actions once completed, so that he could watch the consequences as a casual observer would, as though the repercussions could have stemmed from anyone. 

With Shizuo, though, it was different. Shizuo made things very personal. The look in his eyes on glimpsing Izaya in the streets, the way he was mentioned by Izaya’s sources, the rumors that spread about the two of them across the internet - all of it amounted to something which was painfully intimate. Izaya couldn’t separate himself from the beast anymore if he tried. 

Not that he always thought of the man as a beast. When Shinra had first spoken of his abnormally strong friend, Izaya’s heart fostered something like hope. Finally, someone abnormal, someone interesting. Someone like him. 

As those emotions had grown, so had Izaya’s disgust at having any emotions at all, so that when they finally met - though it wasn’t a great span of time between knowing and meeting - Izaya had to kill his own demons, or such as he perceived them. It wouldn’t do for him to hope, or feel. He had to ruin things for himself before anyone else got the chance to. It wouldn’t do for him to ever be vulnerable. 

And he wasn’t. As high school dragged on and Izaya become involved with the Awakusu-kai, as he graduated, as he built a life as an untouchable informant in a penthouse above the world - he never allowed himself the luxury of being vulnerable. Of being weak.

Sometimes he wondered if that had been the right choice, and quickly decided it was. He couldn’t have had any other life. He was meant for this job, and this job was meant to be held by someone in a position of strength. 

Izaya heaves a sigh and stands, looking dispassionately out the window and over the city he both loves and hates. The lights twinkle below him, but for once it holds no interest, and he retires to his bedroom with the mostly-empty bottle of bourbon, slinging it to his lips occasionally. Sitting in his oversized bed in the dark, fully dressed and oddly aching, it doesn’t seem to matter much anymore about being strong. He wishes Namie were still here to goad him. Somewhere along the way he has come to view her as an older sibling.

A twinge of pain arcs across his chest, reminding him of the two ribs Shizuo broke with a trash can when the info broker wasn’t fast enough. It has been two weeks, but the sharp ache lingers when he moves wrong, or so he tells himself. It has nothing to do with thoughts of his own siblings, and the kind of older brother he has been to them. Cold and distant, financially providing but emotionally dead. As his parents had been to him, back when they spoke to him. 

He eases his eyes shut, listening to the whir of the space heater by the bed. Namie often told him it would catch fire from being left on for days at a time, and that he would burn to death in his bed, and that she hoped he had included a suicide-by-stupidity clause in his will that would leave her financially secure for a long while after his untimely passing.

He smiles at that, but still doesn’t sleep for a long time.


End file.
